Page 32 of Ruthless Alpha
“If you want it, you’re going to need three fingers first,” he said, and I shivered. Was it with anticipation or fear? I wanted him so badly I could hardly think, but I knew Alphas were built differently from other males. I knew Xander was built differently from other Alphas.
“Please,” I whimpered.
Xander wasted no time, and I couldn’t hold back a moan as I stretched around three of his fingers. My thighs were quivering so badly I could hardly stand, and I felt Xander’s other arm come around my waist to hold me upright as he fuckedme with those fingers—slow at first, but building in pace until I was panting and squirming in his grasp, suddenly back on that terrifying, tantalizing edge.
“Let go, angel,” Xander breathed, so I did.
My orgasm rocked through me, lighting up every nerve ending and turning my legs entirely to jelly. I collapsed against Xander, panting and wrung out and somehow still wanting. He peppered kisses against my hair and my face, the hand that wasn’t still buried inside me stroking my back and my legs and every untouched inch of skin he could reach.
Gently, so gently, he laid me back on the basement floor, slowly pulling his fingers out of me. They made a dirty, wet-slick sound, and my eyes widened as he brought those fingers immediately to his mouth, licking them clean like a cat who got the cream. Already, I was aching for more, my hips bucking up against the hard outline of his cock in his sweatpants, and he let out a desperate sound of his own.
“Easy, easy,” Xander murmured, leaning over to kiss me as he pushed down his pants to free his cock. He’d only meant to give me a fleeting, comforting peck, but I could taste myself on his lips, and I couldn’t resist licking into his mouth, needing him closer.
When the head of his cock pressed up against my entrance, my mind went blank. The blunt pressure of it already had me tilting my hips, needing him inside me even as I felt how thick he was.
“Are you sure?” he panted against my mouth, and I nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah—please.”
My scream was muffled against his mouth as he pushed in. Every inch of me was a live wire, the white hot pleasure-pain of stretching around him crackling through my whole body. Every new inch felt like it must be the last, but then I was splitting open again. Our kiss had turned to a messy caress of lips on jawlines and cheeks and necks, and I couldn’t stop the long, low keening that came with every exhale.
“Fuck,”breathed Xander once he was fully seated inside me. Even with my whole body shaking, I couldn’t resist reaching up to smooth out the lines between his eyebrows where they were furrowed in concentration.
“Please,” I begged, one last time.
When he started to move—slow and shallow at first—I stopped breathing. The drag of him inside me felt so good, the edge of pain making my toes curl.
“You’re doing so well,” he promised, pressing kisses to my neck and the line of my jaw. His strong arms were shaking with the effort of holding back, but I didn’t want him to. Speechless with pleasure, I could only start to roll my hips in time with his thrusts, encouraging him to go deeper, faster,more.With every snap of his hips, I climbed higher, my legs wrapping around his hips of their own accord, my back arching and my nails raking angry lines down his back.
Time moved syrup-slow, each stroke lasting a lifetime, and when I shattered apart again, my climax seemed to last forever. Just when I thought I might come down, he moved inside me again, and I was still coming, gasping and clenching around him until I felt his own release rush into me.
Reality came back to me in pieces: the feeling of the hard basement floor against my back, the ache in my thighs, and thestickiness of my arousal, the sound of Xander’s soft breath as he pressed tender kisses along my jawline.
It should have been perfect. I’d found my mate, and he was strong and kind and handsome. He wanted me, and I wanted him. So why did the bond feel like a noose around my neck?
Chapter 15 - Xander
When I woke, I was alone, and for a moment I wondered whether the previous evening had all been a dream. In my half-asleep state, it took a while to catalog the evidence: her wildflower scent on my sheets, the faint burn on my back from where she had dug her nails into my skin, and the contented ache in my muscles that spoke of a night well spent.
I remembered carrying her upstairs to the bathroom afterward, sitting her on the edge of the bath and cleaning her up with a cool, damp cloth before I bundled her into my bed. I hadn’t knotted her, but Rosie was wrung out and sore, already half-asleep by the time I got the pair of us settled. It was so easy to fall asleep with her in my arms, inhaling the scent of her hair with every breath.
It was harder to wake up without her. As I drifted off to sleep, I looked forward to having her in my arms when dawn broke and spending a lazy morning in bed together. I wanted to explore every inch of her skin while it was still warm from sleep, to find every spot that made her shiver, to know what her smile tasted like.
We had years for that, I supposed. That’s what mating was, after all: the promise of forever. It was easy to take for granted when you mated young, like so many of our kind did, but I was going to cherish every second of the time I got with her. After so many weeks of feeling like my love for her was misguided, it was freeing to know that fate had brought us together all along.
I was going to be so smug when I radioed Ethan and told him I was right about delayed mating with witches. Usually, the mating bond formed the first time a male and a female touchedafter they’d both reached shifting age, and that was that. Once the claiming bite was in place, they could share emotions, and they’d be tied together for life. For witch-shifters, this seemed not to be the case: neither Julia nor Rosie had triggered the mating bond until their magic had fully manifested.
Maybe Rosie and I could take a trip over to Ferris someday soon. She’d like the opportunity to get out of the house, and I knew Julia would win her over within a few minutes. It would be good for her to have someone to talk about her magic with, someone who was still fairly new to it, just like she was. Eve was a good woman—at least, in most ways—but I could imagine she was pretty intimidating to someone as young and inexperienced as Rosie. Julia would be a better teacher, even if she knew less.
There was a spring in my step as I entered the kitchen, the smell of cooking sausages hanging in the air. Rosie was washing up an empty plate and mug—Jace must have come and gone already this morning, I’d been late to rise—apparently unaware of my presence. I watched her for a little while, admiring the way the morning sun illuminated her golden hair, making it look like a halo. She really was an angel.
“Damn,” I said, “I was going to makeyoubreakfast this morning.”
She jumped at the sound of my voice, blushing as she realized it was only me.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, rushing over to the pan with the sausages, suddenly very focused on her task. Was she shy after yesterday? It had been unexpected for both of us—perhaps she didn’t know how to act around me this morning.
“I was having very pleasant dreams,” I said, coming to stand behind her at the stove and placing my hands lightly on her hips, “but I think reality is much better this morning.”
